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A Monterey County Sheriff’s deputy is under investigation by prosecutors on allegations he may have improperly prepared narcotics search warrants that were ultimately signed off by judges.

The warrants lead to law enforcement conducting searches in connection to more than 20 pending and closed cases.

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The two-month investigation is expected to be completed next week with no criminal charges filed against the deputy.

“There are no bad faith violations here involved in this in this particular investigation. If there were we would be talking about something that’s potentially criminal. There may be best practices issues,” said chief deputy district attorney Berkely Brannon.

Neither Monterey County District Attorney investigators nor a sheriff’s department spokesman would identify the deputy under investigation. But nobody has been placed on leave or fired as a result of the ongoing investigation.

Cmdr. John Thornburg said the Sheriff's Office is cooperating with investigators and looks forward to any findings.

“To really dive in and see is there a policy or procedure that one; needs to be added two; needs to be changed or three; just needs to be retrained on to make sure our personnel are following the policies and procedures that lead to good police work,” Thornburg said.

The investigation could put into doubt a number of drug cases if it’s determined the narcotics search warrants were not properly prepared.

If that’s the case, it could mean evidence may have been illegally seized and can not be used against a defendant.

Prosecutors say they will present their findings to defense attorneys and let them decide if they want to file a motion to suppress evidence.

“If we can prove that there was a fact left out or a fact added or just some sort of lie out of nowhere that impacted the judge’s decision all of the evidence would be essentially thrown out of the case,” said criminal defense attorney Brian Worthington.

Brannon said cases currently going through the court system have been put on hold pending the outcome of the investigation.